Jan 28, 2023 · My roommate worked at Petco and said they once got a shipment of guinea pigs that hadn’t been labeled properly and got partially crushed by a heavier container being put on top. Petco and Petsmart are like puppy mills for rodents. Terrible husbandry and bad breeding. If you buy their animals you are supporting their practices.

Feb 6, 2012 · The problem is inbreeding and breeding inherently sick rats. Rats don't live that long and cancer is expensive to treat. YMMV, my best rat friend ever came from a pet store, but I am having better hopes for our current rats to grow old and cancer free (got 13 rats, 7 …

Sep 9, 2022 · The rats at Petco are sold and bred as feeders, meaning they're often very unhealthy genetically, may carry various respiratory or skin infections, and have on occasion carried rat bite fever. They also tend to have poor temperaments and often sell out quickly because of customers who feed them to other animals.

Aug 28, 2023 · I'm hesitant on pet stores, but because I live in a small town, there aren't a lot of breeders near me. Does anyone have any good experiences with Petco or PetSmart when it comes to rats? I have always adopted all the furry creatures I own through criegslist, but if pet stores are a viable option, id like to try that!

Jan 12, 2016 · The Petsmarts near us (in Columbus Ohio there are three) are still carrying and selling rats. It leads me to believe that your local petco and petsmart may have gotten from a specific supplier that no longer was welcome to them. I asked, specifically, the petsmart people in my stores commented they have a private colony for their rats.

Nov 19, 2014 · This has been my experience buying rats from the chain stores. If you go for the pet store route I would choose Petsmart over Petco if you're going for a chain store. It's sad but Petco doesn't have good quality rats because they sell as feeders. My first rat CC (from Petco) died of mycoplasm before she was even two.

Mar 31, 2022 · Petco doesn't sell pet rats anymore since that boy in San Diego died of rat bite fever. But Whities has a good selection of rats, both in the small animals department and the feeder rats in the reptiles department.

Feeder rats Question: are we allowed to sell rats as feeders? because we can find anything about that on pet net/store IQ, and all of us (workers) are nervous about doing it.

Jul 14, 2023 · Our first two rats were from Petco. One boy passed from cancer. The other boy spent his entire life with a respiratory infection that we cared for with medication. We didn’t realize he was sick from before we got him. We will never get rats from Petco again. We found an exotic pet store near us that we got 4 healthy boys from.

Mar 26, 2016 · Petco/Petsmart will still be a pet supply store, so even if people are adopting rats from local breeders, it wouldn't mean that they couldn't stop by the closest Petco to get some toys or litter or food.